Friday 19 March 2010

Letting go - again and again

To me it seems like this - you start out on the whole business of having children and you have an idea of how you want it to be. Ideally you want two children, a boy and a girl. To begin with all goes well. The boy is born and you love him more than you can say. But then the girl dies and suddenly you have to readjust your ideas about how you thought things would be. But still you expect to have another child. Then you miscarry and you miscarry ....... and all the time you are having to change your expectations. Then you think donor eggs. Yes, but you can't use your own eggs. So actually you're never going to have another baby that is your own. So then you think adoption might be better. But you are told that there are no babies in the UK. You'll have to adopt a child who is two or older. Once again you readjust. You can adopt a baby abroad. A Chinese baby, you think, that would be good. But nowadays it's very difficult to get a Chinese baby so you'll have to have a Russian baby ...... OK fine. But have you seem the admin you'll have to go through? So maybe surrogacy ...... And so it goes on. But the point is that, at every stage, you have to let go of an idea of how you thought the world would be. And that letting go is difficult and it takes time and there really aren't any short cuts. At each stage, as each piece of bad news hits home, you say, 'No way. No way at all. I'm not doing the donor egg thing / the overseas adoption thing / the surrogacy thing ......Never in a million years.' But then over time you see that actually there may be no choice. And slowly you come to accept the new reality. You talk yourself into the fact that it may be a good idea. Of course, the lesson is that you shouldn't ever have an expectations of how anything will be. But of course we do have expectations because we see what other people around us are doing. Wanting two children isn't like wanting to win the Booker Prize / the Pultizer Prize, nor is it like wanting to win millions on the lottery. It's a reasonable expectation - but dangerous all the same.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A beautiful post that once again, summed up exactly how I feel. I don't know where to go from here and more importantly, I'm not sure how much of our lives we should spend chasing the dream. We're happy together, perhaps we should just be happy with what we've got. But it's so hard....
Best wishes.

A&J said...

I can completely relate to your post!

Tash said...

Yup. I've learned not to expect anything, ever again. Even the reasonable stuff. I figure it will only come back to bite me in the ass.

I've watched some relatives and close friends go through adoption and it's not dissimilar from IF with the stress and constant ups/downs, rugs being pulled from underfoot, and god the $. It's entirely another commitment you need to agree to.

I get this. And I feel for you.

niobe said...

I realize this sounds awfully Pollyanna-ish, but the way it's worked for me is that I've, over time, come to embrace the fact that I'm traveling a different road than most people.

Not saying that it will work that way for you. But it just might.

Because a few years ago, I was one of those people who said I'll never, ever, ever do surrogacy. And look where I am now.

caitsmom said...

Ah, yes, so difficult to manage our expectations and what seems reasonable to hope for. Peace.

Karin said...

Maybe for me, my initial reaction to an altered plan is anger for having to be send down a road I hadn't intended to go down. Then after I can release my anger, I feel more open to options. But all that takes time. If I'd not spent the time rebelling, I might have gotten onto this donor egg or adoption rollercoaster sooner and then we'd be closer to the end than we are now. So of course, that makes me ticked off at myself. LOL

Currently, our dossier is in the Philippines and so we are closer. A bit.